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It was time for us to head north. Jo was getting anxious to get on with her new life at the senior residence. Tumbleweed was still concerned about the back wall. She had nightmares dreaming about we cats slipping out the back as she drove down the road leaving us scattered along I-95.

Since we spent most of our Florida time near the Gulf of Mexico…and a little too close to alligators for my comfort…we stopped for a couple of nights at a park on an outer bank of Florida where we were surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean except where the causeway reached out from the mainland.

Jo went out with her big shady hat to sit on the beach and enjoy watching the waves. However, it turned out to be windy and she soon wanted to come back to the RV where she didn’t have to hold on to her hat to keep it from blowing.

Soon we were on the road backtracking on the roads that we used coming south. When we got to Oswego, NY we were really ready to sit still and be able to sleep on the dash which we couldn’t do while driving. (Remember: No cats allowed on the dash while the RV is in motion.)

We delivered Jo to her new residence. She had just moved in after selling the farm when she decided to go to Florida with us. Now she needed time to get used to her place and all the new people that she would be living with.

We were enjoying Lake Ontario and our site at Sunset RV Park. But Tumbleweed wanted to get the back wall repaired so she soon moved all of us cats to Paws and Effect to board there while the RV was being repaired. Peanut and Jelly were going with Tumbleweed and staying in a motel near the Camping World where the repairs were to be done. Lucky dogs!!

We had a good time in our temporary quarters where someone fed us, changed our litter pans and let us out to play in a large room for a while each day. More space than we had in the RV. Termite was the only one who didn’t enjoy this foray.He was so shy and all he wanted to do was hide. But this was like being in a fish bowl and sometimes the “keepers” forgot to give him his blanket to hide under. They got him mixed up with Butter who never wanted to hide. He was just a big show-off.

Though we were well treated and well taken care of, we all were glad to get into our crates to be carried back to the RV. No matter how good things are, there is no place likehome. Most of us really appreciated that sound: HOME. We had been wanderers or shifted from home to shelter etc. so we really had good feelings of coming home….even if our home was on wheels.

While still in Punta Gorda, we had our first Christmas in our home on wheels. What seems strange is the lack of snow and cold weather. Can this really be Christmas in December? …..or do you think it’s July?

Tumbleweed received mail that was not a Christmas greeting. It let us know that there was a recall on our brakes!! We were able to get another month in Punta Gorda waiting for our appointment for the brake work.
When we finally got to the RV shop we found out that the new brakes were on back order. It would be another month. So we drove carefully to the Everglades. I did not like alligator alley. Not only were there alligators near the road but a high fence was in place to keep the panthers away from the road.

We stayed in a nice park but some spots were still being cleaned up from the last hurricane. Once we got settled in our spot, I warned Butter not to try his trick of jumping out the opening in the screen for the handle. It just might be his last jump.

Late one night Truffles and Iggy were in the hallway in hunter mode in front of a lower drawer near the floor. Tumbleweed opened the drawer very carefully thinking that there might be a mouse. However, they found Paco. When Josephine put her shoes in and took out her slippers, he must have climbed in and she closed the drawer. He went from one drawer to another and rearranged everything.

Look at the size of this little Maine-coon mix! I don’t know how he fit!

We were finally able to return up to Ft. Meyers where the RV shop now had the brakes to replace ours. Now we can head to the east side of Florida and take a look at the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s around Dec 4th and I hear Christmas Carols on the radio but the sun is shining and there isn’t any snow. I can’t believe this! Tumbleweed drove the long way around. Near Tampa, she decided to take the bridge across to St Petersburg. It was a long one (I think I read 7 miles long). We found a Cracker Barrel Restaurant where we stopped (thank goodness) and stayed overnight. Next day I heard her say we’re going to Punta Gorda. “Mary Rose lives in Port Charlotte but we would go on to Punta Gorda on the other side of the Peace River.” So we headed in that direction. And then stopped again for a night in Venice at Snook’s Haven. I heard her say that our reservations were for the next day.

When we were finally parked in Encore Park in Punta Gorda, I saw the strangest tree outside our window. Tumbleweed said it was a Palm Tree. We didn’t have anything that looked that strange in New York and still call it a tree.

We settled in the park in Punta Gorda and prepared to stay for a month so they could have Christmas with Mary Rose. We (meaning us cats) would stay in the RV enlarged by having the sliders out and have a great time running, climbing, playing and sleeping inside. Tumbleweed and Josephine would visit friends in Florida and dray the dogs ut along.

Peanut and Jelly got to sit outside in their pen and go for walks in the RV Park.

They soon learned to watch out for fire ants. You remember if you get bit by fire ants!! We didn’t want them to bring any into the RV with them.

Peanut may look small but she is ferocious and caused trouble sometimes barking at large dogs and expecting Jelly to follow her on her “attack mission”. She was lucky when she got away from Tumbleweed one day to run after a big black dog. She turned back when Jelly wasn’t there behind her. She gave him such a hard time when they came back to the RV!

When they were walking, they saw a creek with big birds that they had not seen before. Some were big and blue (I overheard Tumbleweed talking about Great Blue Herons). That’s what they probably saw. But she said there were large white ones too.

This is what they saw at the back of the Park. Tumbleweed walked with another woman in the park to a nearby reserve which she said was called Alligator Creek Reserve.

I hope the Alligators stay far away. The dogs did not get to go there for their walk!

Strange! We used the air-conditioner in the RV in December! I was glad. My long haired coat is not designed for hot, muggy weather!

Sunny continues his adventure: After Thanksgiving, we moved out of North Carolina. We stopped for a couple days in Santee South Carolina. Tumbleweed said it was time to do laundry and clean up a bit. Then back on the road to Georgia. Tumbleweed had found out about Jekyll Island where friends had stayed and enjoyed the island. From I-95 we found our way to the causeway that led to the offshore Island. The ocean was all around us. AND the place was less commercialized than the other “Golden Isles” of Georgia.

This place protected Sea Turtles. We learned a lot from turtles because they knew how to travel with their homes wherever they went. Now we do too.

We had a great time. This is our back room…the cats’ room. Termite and Truffles are lounging on the bed. That handsome cat on top of the window cover is me. I really enjoy climbing around in the RV. We loved the wonderful sea air now that it was warm enough to have a few windows open. Of course, Peanut and Jelly got to go outside and they told us about the beach where they ran on the sand and chased the little sanderlings (the little birds that ran around near the ocean)

Everything was going fine until Tumbleweed was cleaning our room and found a crack in the back wall. She was going to blame us. We just all looked dumb as though we didn’t know anything about it. “We did have a fantasy that if the crack opened up, we could all sneak out as she drove down the road. It could have been a high adventure.”

But then she went to check the outside of the back wall. I’ll let her tell you about it:

Tumbleweed speaking: I had bought the RV second hand. It was a great deal. The prior owners had added some good things to the original RV…most of them good adds. However, they had a special piece added on the back to carry their spare tire. The vertical bar attached to the back wall was not braced on the bumper and as we drove from New York to Georgia, the weight of the tire had started to pull the bar loose at the top and then push in at the bottom…thus the crack in the wall. Luckily we had good neighbors, Wayne and Eileen. Wayne had been a truck driver and had the strength and the right tools to remove the tire. (We carried it the rest of our journey in the cats’ room.) We spent an extra day to give the gel that I used to fill and cover the crack. It did work to keep it dry and lasted until the spring when we returned to New York. Below is the RV without the tire on the back.

Sunny speaking: We enjoyed using the tire as a new scratching post. Luckily, it never had to be used as a replacement tire on the road.

Well. We hung around Maryland for a couple of weeks. While Tumbleweed and Jo were visiting and seeing the sights, we enjoyed playing in the RV. It was nice having the slider out. Some of us would run from the back of the RV up to the front end of the couch, jump up on the couch and then climb right up the wall where there was some material covering part of it. We could grab hold for a bit and then fall back to the couch. We had a great time while the humans were out.

Sometimes they took the dogs with them and it was really CAT TIME in the RV!

Then, we pulled everything in and brought the slider back into position. Time to move on! They mentioned Durham, North Carolina…I checked out the map. It was quite a drive. We went far enough West to avoid the traffic around Washington, DC.

We had a hard time finding Birchwood RV Park because it was actually inside Durham. It was near several hospitals, medical centers and Duke University. Many of the people in the park were patients waiting for or recovering from surgery especially for implants. The dogs told us about some of the people they met when out walking.

One day they came back excited because they met a chocolate lab that belonged to a man who lived and worked in the park. He was actually a sculptor originally from Columbus, Ohio. His little house was in the woods and I heard Tumbleweed and Jo talking about the wood and stone carvings that he had in his yard. The Lab was called Rocky and Harley (that’s the man’s name) thought it was a good joke that he had carved a statue of Rocky out of stone (instead of wood).

We were there for Thanksgiving and Tumbleweeds relatives went on to Florida to be with their family for Thanksgiving. Harley accepted an invitation to go to Cracker Barrel with Tumbleweed and Jo for turkey dinner. They came back smiling so I assume they had a good time.

Well, when we were ready to leave the park, Harley brought Rocky over to say goodbye. I think he had had a couple beers before coming to see us. He brought Rocky right into the RV and sat down to talk. We – both cats and dogs- went to the back room for safety. He was really big…even our dogs were too small to take him on … even though Peanut (our Chihuahua) challenged him a little. But she stopped when Jelly didn’t join in with the barking.

Butter who is the craziest cat that I have ever known kept running out and challenging Rocky to play with him, and then when Rocky reached out his big paw, Butter would run to the back room. But before long he would come right back out again.

Harley finally was beginning to nod from his earlier drinks and he left taking Rocky home with him. A little later, there was a scratching at the door. Rocky wasn’t finished visiting. Tumbleweed opened the window and told him to “Go back home”. He left. But a little while later he was scratching at the door again. Same routine! “Rocky, go home!” After this happened several times, Harley came and got him and must have taken him inside because we never saw him again that night.

Well we rode a long ways with stops at road side rests and the Flying J Truck stops. Finally we stopped for a couple weeks in Maryland. The Ramblin’ Pines Campground was very woodsy. The man from the park led us to the site and helped us back in between a lot of trees.

When the dogs went out for their walk, Tumbleweed kept telling Jelly to be careful where he put his nose. He kept nosing into the piles of fall leaves that were all over the park. Sure enough he came back with a big tick right on the top of his nose.

Tumbleweed had friends in the area so she and Jo went out to visit a lot. We were all trying to get turns sitting on the dash so that we could watch the squirrels in the park. At first we were scared when the pine cones dropped on top of the RV but we soon got used to it.

That’s Truffles on the far left and Butter and Jelly next to each other.Above them, you can see our “mascot”: a turtle hanging with his parachute. We are like him…we travel with our home. It felt good to sit still for a while.

The house was emptied: everything sold or in the RV or put in storage…Tumbleweed’s older friend, Jo had just sold her family farm and moved into Senior housing. She was ready for a change and an opportunity to visit a childhood friend in Florida. We picked her up at her Senior housing: packed, smiling and ready to take a long ride in our home. So the door closes and she takes her Seat on the passenger side. She soon got used to all of us 4-leggeds. She talked to us, petted us, rested with us all around her and even let Butter and Bandit share her bed (as long as they slept at the bottom.

We pointed south down Route 81, into Pennsylvania and experienced sleeping next to Truckers (many of them had dogs with them, Jelly and Peanut met them when out walking. I loved watching for that Flying J sign where RV’s had special parking and weren’t in the lot with the truckers.

We kept on going through southern NY, into and through PA and into Maryland. We had so much fun seeing the countryside through our windows and seeing early Fall when we had just left late Fall.

Our Home on wheels was cozy but full….now we were 7 cats, 2 dogs and TWO Humans